


Dissipated

by Arukou



Series: Tumblr Archive the Second [12]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Character Death, Dark, Gen, Hurt No Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 18:58:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17028192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arukou/pseuds/Arukou
Summary: He's there. He's right there.





	Dissipated

**Author's Note:**

> Posted first [here](http://arukou-arukou.tumblr.com/post/170961644956/listen-remember-when-i-said-i-wanted-to-write-i) in response to the AA episode in which Nat can wield the infinity stones and resist them better than any other Avenger, but they still eventually corrupt her. I was in a dark mood and was thinking about what would happen if it was Nat who wielded the Gauntlet in Avengers 4. Spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War.

She never saw him after the hellicarrier dropped. Not like this. She saw him in the hospital post-surgery, covered in sterile whites with a heart monitor beating like a promise and Sam Wilson standing guard. She didn’t see him sopping wet and broken, blood staining his uniform and mud smeared over his body. She imagines it was something like this.

He’s there, under a jut of concrete. There’s a stick of rebar through the right side of his chest and his leg is twisted at an impossible angle. His cheekbone has caved under the pressure of a titan’s fist, and he barely looks like himself. She doesn’t understand how he’s still breathing, how his body is still carrying on. Skidding to a stop at his side, she falls to her knees. Her teeth are grinding to ash in her skull and her hands clench bloody half-moons into her palm. She never meant to start caring for people. This is what happens when you care for people. They leave.

And somehow he’s still breathing.

“Steve?”

She hates the sound of her own voice, the way the gravel in it cracks and grates around the dust in her throat, the way it betrays how close she is to breaking. Overhead, the battle roars on, but it feels so distant, so unimportant.

Somehow, his eyes are open.

“You came.”

“Of course I came. You needed me.”

“Tony said you were in the wind.”

“And now I’m here.”

He smiles, just a little, and more of his face shifts and breaks.

“Don’t do this, Steve. Don’t leave me.”

His fist moves somehow, clenched tight around something. She looks down as though hypnotized, at the glow of orange spilling between his fingers.

“It’s dangerous,” Steve says, pushing the gem into her hand. She doesn’t know when she laid it on his chest. “But you’re strong. I know you…” he coughs and blood spills over his lips. “You can do this.”

“No. No, _you_ can do this. You’re our leader. It’s supposed to be you.”

She doesn’t want what he’s giving her, doesn’t want the strange sounds the gem sends crackling through her head. She knows about Jane, about Loki and Peter and Stephen and what they all say it was like to bear a stone. It was never supposed to be someone like her.

“It has to be you now, Nat.”

“No,” she says again. He’s the most stubborn man on the planet. If she can just make him _remember_ –

“It’s okay. I was never meant…” he doesn’t finish the thought.

She’s watched so many men die. Killed so many men. She knows what it’s like to watch the life fade from their eyes, their chests fall one last time. It’s not supposed to be him. In her fist, the gem crackles and rumbles. It tells her she could change things. Could bring him back. His soul is right there. She can see it now, hovering over his body. It would be so easy.

She swallows and shakes her head. He gave her a mission, a job. And she’ll finish it. The gem senses her desires, is already giving her all she needs. As easy as thought, the gauntlet comes to her. Thanos, standing over Tony and Thor, looks stunned, staring down at his bare fist. Against the power of a millennia of souls, his will is nothing.

When she was still with the Red room, Nat had killed dispassionately. It was a job, and she had been trained not to register the life leaving her victims. Afterward, once Clint and Fury and Coulson and all the rest tried to teach her the value of life, she felt bad for the innocents she’d killed. But she hadn’t felt bad about the villains. It was a job. Just a job.

This? This is not a job. She enjoys every minute of it. Making him feel the pain Steve must’ve felt. Watching fear fill his eyes. In the end, death is a mercy, one she wishes she wasn’t granting him. His body falls to the ground, limp as a rag doll, and she floats before what’s left of their sad, broken team, the gauntlet glinting on her hand and the power of it beating in her heart.

For a moment, a moment which the time gem stretches to eternity, she is filled with rage at all of them, too. If only they’d _listened_ , if only they hadn’t lost focus of what was most important, then maybe Steve…

With a shudder, she strips the gauntlet from her hand and wishes as hard as she can. Her feet strike the ground and she crumples, while above her, the sky is clear as though the gauntlet was never there to begin with. All around her, buildings smoke, and people moan, and the world settles into its new fractured shape.

“Nat?” That’s Tony. His left arm hangs at his side, unmoving, the armor peeled from his chest like so much tinfoil.

James is behind him, and his new arm, the beautiful one T’Challa had gifted him, has been reduced to a stump yet again.

“What did you do?” Quill demands. He doesn’t understand. None of them do. The price is too high. It’s too damn high.

“I made it go away,” she whispers, clutching her fist. She can still feel an echo of it within herself, the power of the universe crammed into a body until it nearly bursts at the seams. “I made it go away.”

She looks over at Thanos’ body, at what she’s done to it. It was supposed to make her feel better, but she only feels numb. She only feels numb.

“Nat?” Tony again. Clint behind him now. Hulk. Vision. They’re all gathering around her and she can’t bear it. She can’t she can’t she

“He’s dead,” she whispers. “He’s dead and it’s done and I will never forgive any of you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe find me on [Tumblr](http://arukou-arukou.tumblr.com/) if I haven't been purged.


End file.
